Late 2007 - Getting Serious

At this point I had a wine cellar with 800+/- bottles of wine made from high and low end kits, fruit from my trees, and now FRESH grapes and juice. I had only read a few winemaking books and read some material from various websites. So.... I continued to read everything I could get my hands on.... see the following list......

Jack Keller Website
BCAWA website
VAWA website
WinePress Bulletin Board postings
WineMaker Magazine articles (got back issues-almost all of them!)
Michiel Pergens - Home Winemaking
William Konnerth - WineMaking
Raymond Massaccesi - WineMaker's Recipe Handbook
Terrey Garey - The Joy of Home WineMaking
Lum Eisnman - The Home Winemaker's Manual
Jon Iverson - Home WineMaking
Jim Law - The BackYard Vintner - Vineyard Management
Jeff Cox - From Vines to Wines
Daniel Pambianchi - Techniques for making Chateau Style Wines
Philip Jackisch - Modern Wine Making Chemistry
The Wine Maker's Answer Book - Alison Crowe
Yair Margalit - Small Winery Technology and Operations - Chemistry
Thomas Plocher - Making Cold Climate Wines
Understanding Wine Technology - David Bird
The Science of Wine - Jamie Goode
The Art and Science of Wine - James Halliday
The Way To Make Wine - Sheridan Warrick
Knowing and Making Wine - Emile Peynaud (U. of Bordeaux, France-translated into english)
Winemaking -University of California at Davis
University of Bordeaux, France - Enology I (English)
University of Bordeaux, France - Enology II (English)



By now I knew that I did not want to go commercial but hopefully the books above would allow me to better understand things. I was satisfied just making wine for my own consumption but wanted to make the best possible wine I could. So, reading all these books about wine/grape chemistry, wine science, winery operations, along with enology textbooks from U.C. Davis and books from world famous authors such as Jackish, Margalit, Peynaud, etc. really helped. I learned a lot! The more I learned the more I realized how much I did not understand beforehand!! And, the more I realized how much I still don't know. But, book knowledge is not the same as hands-on experience. I need to get more "experience". I really need a "mentor".

At this point, I wanted to stop making kits and do all fresh fruits/juice if I could. At this point I'm fairly confident that 2007 will be the last year that I make kits.

I already had fairly sufficient equipment such as floor corker, pH meter, Chromatography testing items, refractomer, Mity-vac, filtering setup, large fermentors, etc. But I still lacked some things such as a good press, a crusher/destemmer, inert gas setup to name a few.

I also wanted to use better corks because I was making better wines (fresh vs kits). I ordered some "real" corks (vs aglomerated or synthetic) but found that they were a bit dry (probably sitting around waiting to be sold in small quantities). So, in order to be sure I would get "fresh and moist" real corks, I ordered a sealed bag of 1,000 corks and re-bagged them in smaller quantities myself (used Food Saver machine and 1/2 gallon mason jars).

And....I bought a Nitrogen/Argon inert gas set up and began working on a better and larger press.